Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
Every year around Mother’s Day, the wonderful people at Fair Trade work hard to share the stories about the many women behind their Fair Trade products. This year, their theme is: “FairHer: Celebrating the Women of Fair Trade.” One of the founding principles of Fair Trade is Women’s empowerment. In addition to freedom from harassment, Fair Trade certification ensures that women have a voice, a vote, and a leadership role in the community.
What is Fair Trade?
• Fair Trade helps farmers (more than 1.2 million worldwide) in developing countries build sustainable businesses that positively influence their communities.
• Products that bear the Fair Trade logo come from farmers and workers who are justly compensated.
• The rigorous Fair Trade standards ensure that farmers and workers enjoy safe working conditions, regulated work hours, maternity leave and freedom of association. Slave and child labor are strictly prohibited.
• Fair Trade ensures that farmers follow internationally monitored environmental standards and also provides financial incentives and resources for organic conversion, reforestation, water conservation and environmental education.
• Fair Trade empowers women to play an active role in their families and in their co-ops by starting businesses with guaranteed access to health care, certain job rights and freedom from harassment.
• Fair Trade supports education with revenues set aside to build schools and maintain enrollment.
Fortaleza del Valle Cooperative
As in previous years, to help tell the stories about the people behind their food, Fair Trade has paired every blogger participating in this event with a farmer. Meet my match: Mariana del Jesus Mendoza, a cocoa farmer & member of the Fortaleza del Valle Cooperative in Ecuador.
Mariana notes: “Thanks to Fair Trade we are able to sell our cacao at fair and stable prices. Before we were organized into Fortaleza del Valle, many of us did not know how to take true advantage of our plants’ capacities and would ruin them with pesticides and fungicides.”
Cookie monsters …
PrintDouble-Chocolate Espresso Cookies
- Total Time: 24 hours 30 minutes
- Yield: 35 cookies
Description
This recipe is an adaptation from my favorite soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie with some of the flour replaced by cocoa powder and the addition of two teaspoons of finely ground coffee.
Note: For best results, make the dough ahead of time: after mixing the dough, portion it into 48 g balls and refrigerate the balls in an airtight container for at least 24 hours and up to 1 week.
Ingredients
- 1⅓ cups (305 g) unsalted butter, softened
- 1½ cups packed (291 g) light brown sugar
- 1 cup (220 g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 T. pure vanilla extract
- 3 cups (384 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup (28 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1.5 tsp table salt
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. finely ground coffee beans or espresso powder
- 12 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips
- flaky sea salt for sprinkling, optional
Instructions
- Cream butter and sugars together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl, beat again on high for one minute. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until well blended, about another minute on medium-high speed. Whisk flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda, and ground coffee beans together in separate bowl. Add to butter mixture and combine with a spatula or wooden spoon (or very briefly with paddle attachment) until just blended. Add the chocolate chips and stir till combined. The dough will be stiff.
- Portion into 1¾ oz (48 g) sized balls. This is a tedious task, but it makes for beautiful and uniform cookies that bake evenly. If you have a digital scale, this is easy; if you have no scale, use a small ice cream scoop or some other uniform measuring device. Chill the portioned balls for at least one hour but preferably 24 hours. Keep portioned balls in the fridge for up to 1 week or freeze for months.
- Preheat oven to 375°. Place portioned balls nicely spaced on an ungreased or parchment-lined jelly roll pan. Sprinkle with sea salt if using. Bake for 11 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through cooking. Keep a close watch. You want to remove the cookies from the oven when they still look slightly raw—you will think you are removing them too early. The cookies will continue cooking as they sit on the tray out of the oven. Let cookies cool completely on tray before removing.
- Prep Time: 24 hours minutes
- Cook Time: 11 minutes
- Category: Cookie
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
151 Comments on “Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies”
I always wonder if the cocoa farmers ever get to enjoy chocolate the way we do. I once met a coffee farmer who tried his own coffee roasted and brewed at a coffee shop in my city for the first time. It blew me away that someone growing coffee for years, never actually knew what it tasted like and how it’s enjoyed. Same goes for chocolate. So many of us enjoy it thanks to the many labors of the cocoa farmers. They bring so much joy to our lives, I hope they get to experience how delicious it is too. Imagine making these cookies for example, but not getting to try them. I’d probably never bake cookies again!
Oh wow, I never thought about this. I hope so, too! Thanks for writing in!
Oh yum yum yum! Those look fantastic!
This is an amazing looking giveaway.
The giveaway package looks fantastic ! And so do the cookies.
These cookies look so amazing! I love all of the companies in your giveaway! This rocks Thanks 😀
Have you ever made world peace cookies? Similar in concept but ratios are different.. More butter and cocoa and less sugar relative to the flour. It’s a Dorie Greenspan recipe, just google for a link. By far my favorite chocolate cookie.
Yes, I have, and I LOVE them. I was thinking about those when I made these. I’ll take a look for reference. Thanks for reminding me. They are truly one of the best cookies ever.
I would love to try all these wonderful products ~!
I am going to make them right now. 🙂
Nice!
Wow amazing prize and those cookies look incredible!
This site is my go- to blog. Love the recipes and love these little ones 😉
Thank you, Karen!
What a great giveaway! I buy fair trade whenever I can, and I always love finding new brands or items to try. I didn’t realize Guittard do a fair trade line, in fact, so that’s good to know!
Can’t wait to make these!
The cookies look awesome! The babies are totally cute!
These cookies sound amazing! I can’t wait to make some and thank you for the chance to win these goodies
What a wonderful recipe to use to help support fair trade!
Great giveaway thanks
those chocolate cookies look like perfection <3 never enough chocolate!!
Coffee makes everything better! Cookies look delicious, and thanks for giveaway.
What a great collection of goodies!
Chocolate love!
Chocolate and coffee are two of my favorite flavors, and I love recipes that include both. Your cookies look yummy!
I always try to choose fair trade. I consider any product coming from that far a way a luxury so I want to make sure that the people involved in growing/producing it are getting a fair deal. Tea, chocolate, avocados, bananas, you name it. Fair trade rocks! Thanks for promoting it!
Yes, please! It all looks wonderful!
This looks so great! Doing your best to choose fair trade is important!
Those cookies look amazing! Bookmarked for my next baking project.
I love companies that make a difference. Also these cookies look amazing!
Those are all such great chocolates mentioned in your post! I buy Marich often! Thanks for the great recipe!
Now I’m craving chocolate cookies!! 🙂
gorgeous cookies and an even more gorgeous mission!
I love this. How awesome to spread the importance of this and those cookies look amazing 🙂